Technical Death Metal tends to go one of two ways. It can either blow your socks off and feel like it’s reinventing the wheel, or it can feel like a pale imitation of bands that came before. Necrophagist and Archspire ushered in their own eras of the subgenre, and a lot of bands try to sound like them to no avail. Tech Death is a weird genre, where more of the same isn’t necessarily better, but frowned upon - standard no-frills, meat and potatoes death metal can have 50 bands that sound the same but all sound good, but Tech Death, not so much - it’s not even elitism, it’s just a byproduct of a genre leaning so heavily into experimenting and the talent of its musicians.
That’s why it kind of sucks to see bands get written off just for rolling with the Tech Death tag. Plenty of bands have sunk over the years for not really any reason other than being labelled as Tech Death. People gloss over their music and don’t really listen to them, because there’s no way they are gonna be as good as Spawn of Possession, or Origin. Even bands like Gorod, who have been putting the work in for years, don’t really get their flowers from a lot of metal fans.
This leads me to the subject of today’s review - Demented Heart. This is a band with the deck stacked so hard against them, they’re from Indonesia so they don’t have the best reach, they’ve been together since 2000 (under a different name, Tragang), but have only put out three full-lengths as a band. They have elements that sound daily Necro, but also they have their own sound, and some serious production going on, especially on their latest LP, Frantic Epidemic - which released at the end of May.
Frantic is the correct word here. The guitars are just that, shredding over complex drum rhythms with almost everything sounding like a solo, but coherent and melodic. Some of their tracks even implement clean sections, like the outro of Population Decline, which sounds incredible. Terror and Destruction has a great opening riff and just builds throughout its runtime. Harmonised guitars are a big thing here, as are blast beats. Discernible vocals are always nice, and vocals/rhythm guitarist Muhammad Avan nails them. There’s no indecipherable gutturals here, just pure mid-pitch growls, he does a solid job at rounding out the sound whilst not getting lost in the mix due to the virtuosity of the instrumentation.
Abnormal Funeral has a great tremolo section that gives off a real stank face vibe without resorting to open string chug chugs. That kind of brutality is just so pleasant to listen to. Frantic Epidemic as a whole, over its 31 min runtime is just a serious pleasure to listen through, and a standout Tech Death record of 2023. Don’t miss this one, it belongs on a top 10 somewhere.
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